Ship Roles and design

[Wicky]

I just beat a 1400 stars game with maximum number of chaotic empires, max pirates and max alien lifeforms. I'd have a thousand suggestions but of course I know to keep it short. The two most important things I'd suggest were:

Different AI tasks for military: You could design a military ship that:
1) travels with important ships like colonizers and constructors to protect. (escort)
2) randomly chooses important mines and planets to guard. (guardian)
3) attacks enemy gas mines and freighters while at war. If you are not at war with anyone, they attack pirate bases. (raider)
4) randomly chooses weak enemy colonies and captures them. (assault)

If I design a ship to be a raider with lots of fuel and weapons, it should perform that task by itself.


And second, pls tidy up the ship designing screen. Scrolling through 80 types of armor components is just a mess. I don't know to explain it better than to say, Master of Orion 2 ship designing is best. When you design a new ship, all the minimum requirements like reactor, fuel tanks are already met. You just have to add weapons, shields etc by yourself, and not in some uninspired list, but saying: Enhanced Armor (40). Point. Instead of scrolling through a mile-long list witch 40 armor components and you have to count them by hand.